Search

#31 is off the market ya’ll, he found his woman on EHarmony (and she’s awesome). So.. I signed up for free communication weekend on EHarmony this past weekend.. and I don’t get it at all. Well – scratch that.. I get it.. but I think it’s stupid.

From what I understand, I didn’t have full access to the site on this free trial, which bugs me. I am not going to pay $30/month for something that I don’t get to test-drive the features. (Of course, it’s cheaper if you commit to longer, but why would someone commit to longer when they don’t understand it!?) So, keep in mind – in this opinion piece – I am definitely not fully informed.

What I disliked about EHarmony:

1) There seems to be no browsing feature (which was confirmed by #31). As you may know from reading my blog, I have a tendency of finding people I know on these sites. The fact that I can’t quick browse through and see if there is anyone I wouldn’t want seeing me on there, is a pretty clear cut deal-breaker. I did not add any photos to my profile on my free weekend, and I used an alias name.

2) Apparently over the weekend I had 51 matches. I have absolutely no idea why these people were listed as matches for me. Yeah yeah.. “27 layers of whatever.” No.. I want to know specifically why these people were listed for me.

3) The matches are sorted alphabetically – and there appears to be no way to get rid of them. So – anytime there was anyone new, I had to scroll through my list of 51 people, and see where the little red “NEW” light was. This was uber-annoying. It also only lists the names as well, so in order to see if these people are even attractive, you have to click their name.

4) Free communication? Yeah, not really. I couldn’t actually message people. I could go through the guided communication, which I understand from a business standpoint. But, it doesn’t really make it clear how that process works. Great, I answered some questions for some guy and checked 5 to send back. Nothing went further than that.. I don’t get it.

So – yeah… If I were to think about paying for online dating, I am pretty sure EHarmony would be out. Feel free to try and convince me otherwise.

I actually paid for 6 months of eHarmony because of positive real-life recommendations. I have about one month left and it’s been a total bust. As you note, you do not get to browse — each day I’m given about 5 matches and decide if I want to communicate with them. You don’t have to use the canned questions — there’s an option to go straight to eHarmony email. The problems for me are (1) at least half my matches have no photos up, so I immediately toss them in the reject pile; and (2) most of the others are idiots who can’t spell or write anything even remotely interesting, and are thus completely unappealing (and we won’t even talk about what they look like). I have no issues with anyone seeing me or knowing who I am — I’m 100% single and am not embarrassed about using dating sites — but I am starting to believe that the sites don’t work all that well. For every alleged success, there seem to be dozens of people complaining about the process.